Singularity

The delta remix of Johann’s Stranded was, back in the day, the original guitar track. Ish. And here we have the comeback album. To say it is littered with guitars is something of a musical truism; like saying the same of the new Oasis. It seems like every song on Singularity has been dumbed-down to the most obvious, blinkered music it could ever possibly be. Come Up To The Lab has cringe-making chord transpositions right in the middle of it, taking the key both down and up, and both sounding dreadful. Otherwise, it’s a very very basic sound running at 140bpm, with largely rudimentary sounds throughout: prehistoric kicks, dullard acidlines…. I can appreciate that there’s a certain amount of “oldskool thru a newskool blender” going on, but the chord changes and the rawness of it lets it down. Creeparator is full of guitar, and I mean full of it. Even the electronic noises in the background sound like a guitar, going chugachugchugachug. Once again we’re treated to raw oldskool energy with stacks of thunk, largely from the guitar here. I get the impression he’s trying to replicate the Stranded sound again here? Mate, it doesn’t work. Black Cobra has a promising techno-hook opening, with lots of dizzy topend going on, leading into big, fat oldskool analogue beefing up the lower midrange. It works, it’s tight, it’s carried along nicely. And there’s no guitar! Remote Launcher has a very similar groove to Stranded, with a similar approach to guitarwork: a short riff with enough reverb and distortion on it, that you can thwack the strings hard enough for the sound to still be there 16 beats later. Inexplicably, there’s a top end riff here that seems to be the first four notes of led zeppelin’s Heartbreaker, layered in such a way as to completely disrupt the flow of the rest of the track, as though it’s trying to make you fall over. But in a bad way. Windicator is more or less the most interesting track here; a very individual sound, a tight prog-techno-psytrance crossover with plenty of oldskool credential, but with the 21st century production very much in effect. At times it sounds a little like Suomi trance, and by the end it sounds like Johann has been possessed by the walking ghost of Loopus: the marriage of sounds sits just as awkwardly as you would expect. Right Here On The Floor is a fucking joke. Isn’t it? Go on!! Tell me you’re joking? Tell me that we’re not supposed to take this retarded, lumbering, sextourist-uncle of a track seriously. A groove that sounds like it’s made of Lego, with no changes to the bottom end, breaks and drops that are more obvious than Oprah blocking out the sun and causing mass eclipse-related panic. Same Same But Different featured on the recent ImagiNations Night CD, and if you’ve got it there then there’s no need to have it here. Fat lines, guitar crunches that work, and a moody lo-fi darkness all make this track a winner. In short, this is what I wanted the rest of the album to be like. Klingones Warp is tight space techno, until the guitars come in and sort of derail it, because they’re fucking pitiful. In the context of the rest of the album, it’s just daft. Too often we get the pattern of a guitar break for four beats, then that fades and a little synthy squiggle comes in for four beats. From here it goes into more daft, daft keychanges. Styler is an abhorrence, with the lumbering Johann dinosaur up against some 80s synthlines that would sound more at home with Mylo. Nothing wrong with mixing it up, of course, but when you whack several layers of completely incongruous noises together, it’s bound to fail. Yes, even if you put a massive snare roll in there. And finally, his original masterpiece Stranded gets a rework, which is admirable but just makes me want to listen to the original again. This seems to be bereft of panning, of that automatic-hypnotic vibe the original had that made you feel like you were dancing somewhere midway between the speakers. It’s an interesting curio, but even this doesn’t make the album a decent proposal. I feel like Johann has a low opinion of me. This is all stupid music, for stupid people, to jump up and down in their stupid trousers at stupid clubs all over the stupid world. It will sell well, but that doesn’t mean you should buy it.